“For me, rebellion that is content only with political radicalism is missing a large part of the picture. Any true radicalism has to extend itself to the way that reality itself is constructed. Rebellion has to take itself all the way to the scheme of manifestation itself, to the writing on the walls of eternity. Anything else is missing the forest for the trees.” –Christian Sedman1
It is no wonder that anarchism has not yet had its revolution. Riddled with antiquarian notions of the externalized powers-that-be, the will to fight the police, the State, the politician obtained from a hundred-year-old rotten milkshake of Kropotkin, Goldman, and Proudhon, forever blinded by the ruse that the problem lies elsewhere, that the implement of control still lie outside the self. Well, the anarchists are at least one step ahead of the majority in their distrust of social hierarchies, that much I’ll give them. Yet regardless of my identification with their cause, I feel they have been brought via time machine from the epoch of the Industrial Revolution, brought here by some conniving arch-nemesis whose raison d’etre is to simply annoy me. True, this is better than dealing with the Medieval Aged consciousness of the standard drone of the corporatocratic system. (I hear some of them still believe in monotheism!)
I will no longer deal with the fusty reactionaries of age-old political theories. Anarchist theory was written in the late nineteenth century as a backlash to the early workings of capitalism. The capitalist dog has learned a new trick or three in the last hundred years; the anarchist hasn’t. Not only have the industrial technologies of the factories and laboratories progressed – the State too has developed new social technologies of control, ones that remain invisible, unseen, unfelt, lying submerged beneath our skins, viruses in our bloodstreams, cancers in the marrow of our bones. The postmodern State and its devices of control are now inside of us, in our thoughts, desires, and dreams. They create our self-identification and our perception of reality. They tell us how to feel, how to act, how to look. And what’s worse: they have learned to trick us into thinking that these things are our own. We’re individuals, you see. We’re all unique. We’re all different. We choose to be the way we are.
In order to destroy the State, we must first destroy its most grandiose masterpiece: ourselves. We must recognize that everything we have ever been told is a lie. This is where magic comes in. Enter MAGIC, stage left.
“No man is worthy to fight in the cause of freedom unless he has conquered his internal masters…He must conquer inordinate vanity and anger, self-deception, fear and inhibition. These are the crude ores of his being.” –John Whiteside Parsons
“The average structure of masses of people has been transformed into a distorted structure marked by impotence and fear of life…Man is helpless when he lacks knowledge; helplessness due to ignorance is the fertilizer of dictatorship.” –Wilhelm Reich
Magic, Anarchy, and Science seek the same end: freedom. James Curcio, in an article entitled “Living the Myth: Creating Value in a Cultural Void,” addresses two problems baring the way to the individual proponent of anarchy realizing the necessity of branching rebellion into realms other than the political. They identify these problems as a lack of determined creativity and stubbornly clinging to consensus reality, to the tangibility of everyday life.
Magic is that which is hidden from the senses. It is metaphysics; it is philosophy. The root question is the same, even if the tools differ: What is really going on here? A philosopher uses reason, a shaman may use hallucinogenic roots and drums, and a scientist may use a microscope. Historically, the roots of religion, science and magic are the same.
We can separate people into two ways of looking at the world – those who think that the outside world is “real,” and those who don’t. But as far as magic is concerned, it doesn’t matter if the world out there is “real.” Not even a little bit. Amusingly enough, it does matter that it doesn’t matter. The greatest tool used by the magician to ensure freedom is the fact that no matter what discoveries are made in science, psychology or the occult, no one can have the final word on truth.
This tool is called Doubt. There is no dogma, no grand theory and no overblown ego, that can stand up to this simple tool. With this tool you can avoid ever being taken advantage of by political or religious leaders, by advertisers or gurus: Each of us winds our own path through life, and there are no rules. Authority is an illusion, although hard work is not.2
It also matter whether you think Magic is real or not, because as soon as you start believing in it, it is. Try it for a while. It’s safe, I promise. The water’s fine, and if it heats up too fast you can always step back out, towel off, and go back to your safe haven of zines and consensus-run collective meetings. Be sure to give it an honest go though. Strange things will begin to happen.
Last week I was pulled from my seat on a light rail commuter train for lack for lack of a proper ticket. I would have tried to jump and run when I saw the traffic cop, or tried my other method of talking back to the voice who narrates all my actions, but alas! with my nose buried in the second edition of Relativity, Gravitation, and Cosmology, I am dully unaware of my surroundings, and what’s more, I no longer look the type to be arguing with a disembodied entity about whether or not I was slouching, which is my other tried-and-true method of escaping transit cops.
So I am taken off the train and asked for identification. I mutter that I don’t have any, and the “real” police are immediately radioed in. At this point, I have resigned myself to the depressing likelihood that I am going to jail for the evening or more, due to outstanding warrants, which, I might add, contribute more to the depressing element of it all, as they weren’t even issued for anything that spectacular. But they’re out there regardless – I’ve been notified of up here and there at previous residences. Well, at least I have a book that will last a while, I thought.
I zoned out for a couple seconds, staring at the officer’s handgun, while he ran my name. Unfortunately, my previously unconditional surrender had included my birth name. Then I remembered: I’m free. I’ve done nothing wrong. I haven’t harmed anyone. Perceptions are subjective, based upon the fallibility of the human senses, and therefore all of reality is subjective. This dream is a manifestation of my inner self; alchemically transmutating my self effects the outside world. If I only remember that I’m free, I can bend spacetime according to my will. So I transmutated, creating interference with the alchemical nature of the cops, effecting their decision-making abilities.
Strangely, impossibly, or might I say, magically, it worked. The cop taking down my information immediately re-postured his body, slinking away from me with an anxious glance before huddling over his notepad. And what’s more – he apparently could no longer see me properly, even though I was standing no more than two feet in front of him. “Short brown hair, brown eyes, 5’10”, 130 pounds?” “Yep.” Sure, I mean, if that’s what you what to write down, go for it. I’m not stopping you.
Then another strange thing happened. The cop entering my name into the computer in the squad car says, “Your name. It draws a blank.” I ask him what he means. “It’s blank. For the past three years. No record. You existed before that, but you don’t now. It’s as if someone erased you.” He looks at me, for the first time, somewhat accusingly, before mirroring the anxious expression on the other cops face.
This legitimately shocked me. A squirmy, terrified police officer who suddenly can’t see me properly is amusing, but computers losing information? I supposed it could happen often enough, and for all I knew I might have some altruistic benefactor, may Lucifer shine brightly on their path! out there hacking into and obliterating records nolens volens. But for the moment, it didn’t matter. My spells and hexes, charms and curses, had worked, and to continue working I had to knowing knowing that they always would.
The second officer handed me a ticket with a court date for community service, timidly stepping closer to mumble almost incoherently that if I didn’t show up and take care of it, “maybe somewhere, someday, sometime down the line…maybe three, maybe five years from now” that “something maybe might catch up” with me.
“So you’re telling me I don’t have to show up,” I suggested.
“I can’t say that.”
“Ah. Got it.” And then I turned to walk away.
Now, we could debate endlessly whether or not my magic powers, my rather extensive knowledge of ancient grimmoires, my research on alchemical manuscripts from Hermes Tristmegistus to Francis Bacon, or my sigil workings and practice of the Death Posture had anything to do with my not getting arrested. But that’s pointless, because the fact of the matter is, I didn’t get arrested. So it worked. And I see no need to question something that works. In all likelihood, the computer did not just poof! and lose files. Something else was happening. But whatever that something else was, it worked in accordance with my imagination, my will for the future, and so I enveloped it and made it my own, solve et coagula, mercurie and sulphur combined into the purest gold. So it doesn’t matter what you believe, magic is make-believe, and in that lies its power.
Human existence is a mystery, and all experience is conditioned by relative context. Even the question “is the world out there real?” is meaningless without an “I” to ask it. Realizing all of this, magicians take reality into their own hands because they realize that it is truly their reality.
Taking this step outside the herd, many would-be magicians immediately fall off a cliff, and never return. [“Madness comes rapidly to people who know that they are elves,” writes Simon Forrester.3] They fall into the group that think there is no “real world” out there. (Hit one of these people on the head with a brick and then ask them if it’s real.)
An experience I had a couple years ago may help illustrate this point. I was contacted by a woman who was waking up each morning covered in scratches. She asked me if I thought she was “actually” being attacked. The following joke from Crowley’s Magick in Theory and Practice seemed appropriate to relate:
There is the story of the American in the train who saw another American carrying a basket of unusual shape. His curiousity mastered him and he leant across and said: “Say, stranger, what you got in that bag?”
The other, lantern-jawed and taciturn, replied: “Mongoose.”
The first man was rather baffled, as he had never heard of a mongoose. After a pause he pursued, at the risk of a rebuff: “But say, what is a Mongoose?”
“Mongoose eats snakes,” replied the other.
This was another poser, but he pursued: “What in hell do you want a mongoose for?”
“Well, you see,” said the second man (in a confidential whisper), “my brother sees snakes.”
The first man was more puzzled than ever; but after a long think, he continued rather pathetically: “But say, them ain’t real snakes.”
“Sure,” said the man with the basket, “but this Mongoose ain’t real either.”
She didn’t get the point of this story, and asked me again if I thought it was real. The only thing you can ask at this point is, do you think it is real? If so, you can pursue the problem through ritual. Hell, you might even get paid five hundred dollars to perform a ceremony. If you decide to look at it as not real, i.e. internal rather than external, it can be pursued through psychotherapy. Either is true. Neither is true.
Magic is a philosophy. It is a way of looking at life. Even man’s ideas of God are just that – ideas.
So let’s plumb Crowley’s word “Magick” further. Aleister Crowley defined Magick as the “science and art of causing change in conformity with Will.” Straightforward enough, except for that tricky word, “Will.”
Will is synonymous with Identity – that which one is. [note: I would argue that Will is closer to ipseity, which La prise de la Concorde dictionary defines as “the differential quality of an individual who is irreplaceable and incomparable, which is itself (ipse) and not another. Ipseity...likewise implies an identity to one's self as conservation of this individual differential beyond the changes that affect[sic] it.” In contrast with haecceity, which allows us to define the individual members of the set of chairs as “chairs,” even though some may have three legs, some four, and some may be made of metal or plastic while others are tree stumps, ipseity allows us to identify a specific chair and tell it apart from every other in the subset of Things-To-Sit-On called “chairs.”] However, it is that Identity inflected outward as action. One is what one does. And if one’s doing is equivalent with one’s being, then one is practicing magic.
As this all boils down to identity, magic is in many ways a method for performing psychotherapy on oneself. Congruence between one’s identity and one’s action, even one’s vocation, are essential to be-what-one-is…
The magician desires freedom. The first tool towards this, as previously mentioned, is Doubt; the second is Choice. To make wise decisions, based on one’s goals rather than social convention or expectation, one must know oneself and be willing to die for the right to make that Choice…
The meaning we give to experiences and sensations, even something as simple as a color, is in our hands. For most, this process is primarily automatic, unconscious. However, at some point, and on some level, we have to choose to allow meanings to be given. It is through choosing to accept predetermined meanings that we opt into cultures.
Culture comes about, in part through an agreement on certain terms. [“Wenn ich Kultur hören, entsichere ich meinem Browning”! When I hear the word “culture,” I reach for my Browning.] If a group all choose to give x meaning to object y, they are then entering the same domain together…It is this association of meaning, this “naming” of things, which is the root of our ability to build worlds.
The power of this ability must not be understated. Again, the simple choice to consider the base biological drives a hindrance to spiritual life, rather than the path to it, set the predominant historic trend for two millenia of Western history.
It is this ability to choose to create and give meaning, to reconstruct the coal of our experience and turn it into diamonds, for those who have the subtlety to recognize them, which differentiates a magician. This capacity exists within us all…Of course, the traditional magician uses a wand, has a altar, performs invocations, probably practices yoga, uses sexual secretions for magical purposes, defiles virgins, etc. However, all of these “tools of the trade” are symbolic, first and foremost.
The symbolic power of ritual tools is another key of magical practice, which can be analyzed in terms of structuralist and post-structuralist theories on linguistics and anthropology. We construct our reality through mental images and words that we use to represent things in our experience. The references become bounded to that which they refer…So for the time being put aside the useless question of whether magic, energy, and spirits are or are not “real,” and recognize that what we are working with is our ability to name things, to give them meaning.4
The textbook anarchist and manifesto revolutionary Doubts the morality of hierarchic systems. The next step must be taken. The anarchist magi, justified and bolstered by these Doubts of whether or not these systems should have power in the first place, Chooses to believe that that power is non-existent, effectively stripping them of it. Magic is real just as Anarchy is real, simply because it is my Will. So for all you who seek the elimination of the social injustice that is called the State: take up your jeweled wands and flying broomsticks! And to you, who hide your magic away as a petty weekend hobby: take up your black balaklavas and molotovs!
1 Sedman, Christian. “They Only Want You When You’re Seventeen, When You’re Twenty-One, You’re No Fun”. Generation Hex. Louv, Jason ed. Disinformation Press. New York: 2006.
2 Curcio, Jame. “Living the Myth: Creating Value in a Cultural Void.” ibid. p.123.
3 Forrester, Simon. “Opening and Closing the Psychedelic Temple”. ibid. p. 196.
4 see note 2
Platonic solids, or regular convex polyhedra, are named after the Greek philosopher Plato who theorized that the five classical elements (Empedocles’ wind, water, fire, and earth, with an added element for spirit) were actually comprised of regular polyhedra. They are five in number and named for the number of faces they exhibit. They are the tetrahedron, the hexahedron, the octahedron, the dodecahedron, and the icosahedron. Platonic solids have been the metaphysical and aesthetic inspiration of geometers for thousands of years. Johannes Kepler, a 17th century German mathematician, astronomer, and astrologist, detailed a theory in which the relational distances between the planetary orbits is given by circumscribing the platonic solids within spheres. “In Mysterium Cosmographicum, published in 1596, Kepler laid out a model of the solar system in which the five solids were set inside one another and separated by a series of inscribed and circumscribed spheres. The six spheres each corresponded to one of the planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn). The solids were ordered with the innermost being the octahedron, followed by the icosahedron, dodecahedron, tetrahedron, and finally the cube. In this way the structure of the solar system and the distance relationships between the planets was dictated by the Platonic solids. In the end, Kepler’s original idea had to be abandoned, but out of his research came the recognition that the orbits of planets are ellipses rather than circles, as well as his two laws of orbital dynamics, changing the courses of physics and astronomy, plus the discovery of the Kepler solids.”1
Plato wrote about these polyhedra in the dialogue Timaeus c.360 B.C. in which he associated each of the four classical elements with a regular solid. Earth was associated with the cube, air with the octahedron, water with the icosahedron, and fire with the tetrahedron. There was intuitive justification for these associations: the heat of fire feels sharp and stabbing (like little tetrahedra). Air is made of the octahedron; its minuscule components are so smooth that one can barely feel it. Water, the icosahedron, flows out of one’s hand when picked up, as if it is made of tiny little balls. By contrast, a highly un-spherical solid, the hexahedron (cube) represents earth. These clumsy little solids cause dirt to crumble and break when picked up, in stark difference to the smooth flow of water. Moreover, the solidity of the Earth was believed to be due to the fact that the cube is the only regular solid that tesselates Euclidean space. The fifth Platonic solid, the dodecahedron, Plato obscurely remarks, “…the god used for arranging the constellations on the whole heaven”. Aristotle added a fifth element, aithêr (aether in Latin, “ether” in English) and postulated that the heavens were made of this element, but he had no interest in matching it with Plato’s fifth solid.
